


Caligo (metamorphose)

by Anecdoche (so_psychso)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, MAG 162 spoilers, Meta, POV Second Person, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Ideation, butterfly imagery bc duh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23552302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_psychso/pseuds/Anecdoche
Summary: And still he worships ghosts.You wonder, if you become one, too, could he covet you better?
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Caligo (metamorphose)

**Author's Note:**

> raise your hand if jonny sims personally victimized you with _that _oh so delightful soliloquy__

You wonder; and because it is all there is to do anymore, you wonder over a great many things. It’s not really… thinking in the same way you might have before this change, with notes and bullet points and tacks and red string long enough to lend you a noose for consolation. The dead ends always were so _damn_ frustrating. But, no, you do not _surmise_ in this manner. There’s no _postulating_ or _pontificating_ , barely even a note of inquiry let alone the heady bouquet of conjecture. Such lofty things do not exist, as it were. And weren’t. And aren’t anymore, or ever again.

Still, for the sake of sanity and your sheer, blistering boredom, you do so as best can be managed. 

You… wonder. 

When you were new to this, you wondered about very frivolous concerns, indeed. The world, for instance, you considered to great and agonizing lengths. _What will it look like when I pull back the curtains? Is it even safe to do so? What about the ones caught and captured and so enchantingly unaware? Surely, just a peak won’t hurt._

It did, and you tried your best to wonder no further about the terrible things you saw.

But still… still.

You wonder.

For there are the terrible things, yes, regardless of an audience, and you are not beholden to them, no of course not, and this - _this_ \- infuriates you more than anything. 

You wonder: _W_ _hy can’t we go? Why can’t we try to save them?_

You wonder about safety. How much is there for him? For you? Things that were, now they are not. And the _not_ now _is_ , and it _hurts_ to wonder about that, too, but who else will? 

He won’t, so cocooned around himself, and you half _wonder_ if you’re of any use to him at all. He is a perfection of misery, the whip that carves out self flagellation, and the hand that wields it, too. Lash upon lash, that tongue so sweetly bathed in his own blood, unspilled. Were it not for you, you’re certain he’d tear himself open. Start at the wrists, and work his way in. The larvae upon the leaf, eating gnashing _gulping_ inexorably onward, till there’s only the center, and even that won’t hold for long. You’re… certain.

You wonder this, when he’s out of sight, off muttering to those recordings. Here you are, for him and him, alone, and still he worships ghosts. 

(You wonder, if you become one, too, could he covet you better? Would he protect you less?) 

You think, no, and then amend this because you do - not - _think_. You wonder, because thinking is too definitive, and above all else, you mustn’t be that. Mustn’t dig your heels in anywhere that’s going to send you toppling at the slightest imbalance. And he is, if nothing else, a precipice, a teetering edge, a plummet that sends you sprawling and screaming for clarity as he ensconces himself, ever tighter - ever woven - in silken syllables and immaculate self-loathing. There, he alights over the bottomless _everything_ , till he splits and soars and leaves you to your falling.

You wonder.

Because he is just that, isn’t he. 

A marvel, a miracle, a defiance even when he’s pretending, when he’s donning his martyrdom like a funeral shroud, like wings scoured of their scales, so you can see right through the ruse. The shimmering obfuscation around his needlessly guarded soul. 

You wonder how to coax him out.

Tea? No, a spectacular calamity.

Talk? Even worse, he just curls in deeper, towards that self you haven’t quite touched, the one he abhors with such ardor.

You’re well acquainted with the meditations of solitude, the epiphanies that can be suffered at just the right angle of manic isolation, but he’s still got that _damn_ recorder. And the phantoms worsen each hour he spends in their miserable company. Miasmal voices - he thinks you don’t hear them - laughter like barbed wire. Familiar smiles, unfamiliar camaraderies. 

There he sits, mourning shadows, because he thinks he can find the light that casts them. 

How little he realizes he’s left you to fend off the dark. Alone.

You still wonder, though, if only for his sake.

At some point, you stop knocking. The doors have gone odd, and the walls are too… soft. Everything is just left of right sans enough _wrongness_ to justify your creeping dread, the recriminations building at the back of your tongue, bile-soaked and vicious. And silenced - swallowed - the second you brave his territory, because you love him, _goddammit_ , and you’re not a masochist - you’re _not_ \- but he’s hurt in so many ways that you aren’t, and it’s not _fair_.

Once, you wondered: _W_ _hy him_? 

You wonder different things now, slightly more selfish, but the sting of imagined castigations keeps you well in line, keeps you humble and _here_. For him.

And so, you wander by his wayside, hoping he’ll come around, trying not to listen in, to observe these statements that are not for you. Were never for you. None of this is _you_ , save for what he makes. Of it. 

Of you.

When the crying stops, when the shivers subside, you wonder about authenticity, of self and sacrifice. Does any of you matter unless spectated by him? Surely, it must, for you keep wandering and wondering. Around the cabin. About the cabin. Respectively. Lest you anger the thing that lurks in the wood grain, but you can’t bring attention to it, because he, simply, does not care.

So it cannot matter truly all that much.

Until it does. And your carefully uncurated world is torn asunder, his conviction so gentle and wary that you almost forget what this was all about. And what it was never about. In your joy, your elation of his emergence, you forget… well, _you_. That you were ever frustrated, furious. That you ever doubted his wallowing. That you ever blamed yourself, even.

You, miraculously, are nothing to this, and everything for him, once more. The ant unto the monarch, though you’d crawl for him, regardless. You’d drag your hands and knees bloody through the wastelands, you’d find the end of this ravaged earth, and you’d bring it back to him, _for_ him. Always, always _him_.

That’s unneeded, though, not with the hand, the heart, he offers like alms, a truce of his guilt and his acceptance laid bare, and your tears in his palms pool like stigmata. Or nectar. Or neither. 

All that could possibly concern you is that he is, for now, sustained. Yourself, his supplement. His wings, frail and lacerated, unfolding into the fray of this unmade world, determined to carry you both to that unspeakable end. And beyond. Whatever it takes. Wherever _it_ takes you. And him.

All that matters, is you will wander it, together. No more hiding. No more groaning and waiting and creaking and crying.

There waits, for you, those scoured wastelands, the decimation of all that was once known and now might never be. It poises for your footsteps, and his, your fury and your calm, your acceptance of strangeness endured for the familiarity of _him_. Hand. And heart.

Yes, you will brace into this new world, together, and you will, if need be, see it burn, too. And behind the flames that catch his wings unawares - his unangelic grace, for he is no savior - as the heat shatters through each primary, resplendent and blinding, you will not flinch. And he will not flee. You will witness as he has not let you. You will understand as he tentatively allows. You will spit and kick and beat the world back bloody and watch what oozes from its thorax.

And you will, together, wonder what there is to behold.


End file.
